One of the results of the continued commitment to professional development by the Country Music Association of Australia (CMAA) and members of the industry is that artists of all stages have access to education and mentors, via the CMAA Academy. Artists in country music can emerge at any age; it just so happens that the existence of the Junior Academy means that artists in their teens are appearing with terrific songs, excellent performance skills and professional attitudes to their work (country music in Australia produces few amateurs, it seems, even if they’re in their teens).
Singer-songwriter Chloe Christine is sixteen years of age. At the age of fourteen she was one of twenty students picked from Australia and New Zealand to attend the CMAA Junior Academy. The next year she released her debut single ‘No One Cares’, and it reached number 8 on the iTunes Country Music charts and number 5 on the My Country Australia charts.
Chloe has been taking singing lessons since she was five, and started teaching herself guitar at eleven years of age. Now she performs regularly at pubs, clubs, festivals and other shows. She’s also released a new single, ‘Direction’, and given her pedigree it is not a surprise that it’s a great song, an accomplished country-pop track that takes its lyrical inspiration from her school life.
Chloe Christine is an example of what makes Australian country music so exciting and vibrant: she’s young but already a professional, releasing music that stands with any in the genre, and showing that a new generation of artists can mix and meld seamlessly with those who have been performing for many years. No doubt she has set herself a high bar at a young age, but there’s also no doubt she has what it takes to keep meeting that bar, and vaulting over it.
Listen to ‘Direction’ on: